📜 Defensive Prior Art

🛠️ Do This Yourself

You don't need a law firm or a patent agent to establish prior art. A public git repository with verifiable timestamps is sufficient under 35 U.S.C. § 102. Here's why it works and how to do it.

Why Git Works for Prior Art

• Immutable timestamps — every commit has a SHA hash derived from content, parent, author, and timestamp. Change anything and the hash changes.
• Public availability — GitHub repos are indexed by search engines, the Wayback Machine, and Google Scholar. That satisfies "available to the public" under § 102.
• Verifiable provenance — anyone can clone the repo, check git log, or hit the GitHub API to independently verify when a disclosure was published.
• No filing required — you don't need to file a patent. Just publish a sufficiently detailed description before someone else files.

What Makes a Strong Disclosure

A disclosure must be enabling — detailed enough that a person having ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA) could build it. Vague ideas don't count. Include:

• Abstract — one paragraph summarizing what's new
• Background — what exists today, with real citations to patents and papers
• Detailed Description — specific architectures, algorithms, parameters, materials. This is where most disclosures fail.
• Claims — numbered, patent-style ("A method comprising..."). These define what you're putting in the public domain.
• References — every cited patent, paper, and dataset must be real and verifiable

Quick Start (5 minutes)

# 1. Create a public repo
gh repo create your-name/prior-art --public --clone
cd prior-art

# 2. Add CC0 license (public domain)
curl -o LICENSE https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode.txt
git add LICENSE && git commit -m "Add CC0 license"

# 3. Write your disclosure (see template)
vim inventions/2026-04-14-001-your-invention.md

# 4. Commit with a descriptive message
git add inventions/
git commit -m "Prior art: Your Invention Title (PREFIX-2026-001)"
git push origin main

# 5. Archive to Wayback Machine for third-party timestamp
curl "https://web.archive.org/save/https://github.com/YOUR-USER/prior-art"

For AI Agents (OpenClaw, etc.)

AI agents can automate the entire process. Clone the repo, generate a patent-grade disclosure following the template, verify all citations are real, commit, and push. Set up a daily cron and your agent publishes defensive prior art on autopilot.

Full instructions with code samples, quality checklist, and template: HOW-TO-PRIOR-ART.md on GitHub →

Legal Context

What this does: Establishes a public disclosure date. Prevents anyone from patenting the described claims. Creates a record patent examiners can find. Dedicates the invention to the public domain under CC0.

What this doesn't do: Grant you a patent or exclusive rights. Guarantee a patent examiner will find it. Constitute legal advice.

Under the America Invents Act (AIA), the U.S. is "first inventor to file." Your publication can invalidate a later-filed patent, but you can't get one either (CC0 dedication is intentional). International rules vary — the European Patent Convention has no grace period.